Roy Pea has long-studied educational technology and, in this interchange with Larry Cuban hosted by Tapped In, reminds us that:

A second caution is replacing flesh with silicon. The point here about technology is to augment physical, hands-on learning, face-to-face encounters, not to replace it, and yet, certainly, there may be places that come to feel that interactive programs, simulations, teleconferencing, travels in cyberspace, are cheaper, more effective, and easier to conduct than the real thing. Let’s watch out for that. (The Pros and Cons of Technology in the Classroom, 1998)

That said, as I listened to him talk about adaptive technologies that monitor and respond to student progress (ala Khan Academy), I became increasingly concerned. Captured in these tweets, here are some of the “benefits” that Pea described, without much in the way of critique, posted in reverse chronological order:

Troy Hicks ? @hickstro

Being an #edtech advocate, I am becoming concerned about the focus on collection of student metadata, both implicit and explicit. #AERA2012

Roy Pea: adaptive systems create large scale testbeds to do experiments in comparative pedagogy; expand social networks for learn #AERA2012

Roy Pea: Expand learner access to data in relation to others creating a networked systems of learners in adaptive learning systems #AERA2012

The idea of a “school of one,” while appealing on one level to anyone who has ever talked about differentiated instruction is, ultimately, terrifying to me. Not because it will eliminate the teacher, per se, although teachers do become more like technicians in this model where they work to support students without really teaching anyone anything directly, or engaging in more substantive conversations in small groups or as a class. While it could be beneficial for students in many ways, my fear is that the implementation of adaptive assessment will inherently isolate students from one another and, as Leigh Graves Wolf reminded me of in a tweet (or three), will create data sets that are ultimately intended to evaluate (and, arguably) punish teachers. This idea of adaptive assessment ties with another popular ed tech trend, one that is perhaps seen as more “progressive,” but in effect is really not much more so, much like many recent edtech fads. For instance, as Ira Socol noted earlier this year, the concept of “flipping” the classroom is very problematic:

But the “Flipped Classroom” is worse than ‘typical homework’ – it literally shifts the explanatory part of school away from the educators and to the home, however disconnected that home might be, however un-educated parents might be, however non-English speaking that home might be, however chaotic that home might be. So, kids with built in advantages get help with the understanding, and kids without come to school the next day clueless. (Changing Gears 2012: rejecting the “flip”)

So, to hear Pea and other distinguished educational technologists talk about adaptive technologies in this manner was, at best, disconcerting. At worst, it is terrifying to think that our children will be measured by computers, as the recent hullabaloo over computer-based writing assessment reminds us. As the CCSS assessments come online, literally, my sincere hope is that teachers continue to question not only their validity as a measurement tool, but also the unintended consequences of such assessments on their students, curriculum, and instruction.

Footnote: Of course, we are all now familiar with the TED-Ed initiative to “flip” videos on their site, and this could be another interesting twist in the conversation. At least with TED, teachers are still in control of the learning process since they create their own versions for the flip.

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Just about a week from now, a number of us will be blogging about mentor texts in the digital writing workshop. Inspired by this announcement and reflecting on her own experience with integrating digital writing into her work as a librarian, Buffy Hamilton offered me many things to think about in a recent blog post on The Unquiet Librarian. She outlines a thoughtful approach to why and how she is integrating digital writing into her library curriculum, and leads into a series of great questions/points, three of which I will quote from and respond to here because I see them as intricately intertwined and important to our work as teachers of digital writing:

I felt frustrated in the professional books I read this fall in that they never seemed to address concrete strategies for scaffolding the digital composition process or effective assessment strategies.

How do I do better job of helping students articulate the learning goals in these projects and to take on more ownership and involvement in constructive, meaningful assessment of their work?

Ultimately, I think some of these challenges come back to the larger challenge of encouraging teachers and students to take an inquiry, participatory stance on learning…

Buffy raises the key issue here about digital writing that could be said for much of the history of writing instruction; this is the tension we feel between allowing students the freedom to choose topics, genres, and assessments that they find personally meaningful and will help them grow as writers in contrast and/or competition to what we feel we should or must do as teachers of writing. In the simplest terms, it boils down to whether or not we prepare students to write five paragraph essays and to be able to respond to prompts on the test, or whether we want them to be real writers. In practice, this means that we are forcing students to engage in a “writing process” and spend more time focused on using rubrics than actually talking with students about their writing. This is a classic model of teacher driven instruction where we must “motivate” students become better writers. The onus of responsibility — not to mention the topics, word limits, and structures of organization for the writing — fall squarely on the shoulders of the teacher.

What Buffy appears to be advocating for, and what I would completely concur with, is a more student-centered approach that invites students to think carefully about the process of writing, however messy that process may be. Traditionally, we’ve had about three genres in school writing: the (five paragraph) essay, the research paper, and the book report. As soon as you open up any one of those genres for multimedia expression, you immediately expose the constraints of those structures and, in turn, make it very difficult for teachers and students to apply traditional rubrics and language of assessment to the products that they create. What does a “thesis statement” look like in a slideshow or a public service announcement? Thus, Buffy hits the nail on the head when she mentions ideas about ownership, meaningful assessment, inquiry, and the participatory stance on learning. These are not just problems with writing, or with digital writing; these are problems with what my colleague Anne Whitney calls the “schooliness” of school. Writing is normally very “schooly” and, when it isn’t, it’s too “touchy/feely.” We are caught in a trap of either living up to a formulaic model or praising students for their efforts without any substantive feedback.

So, to that end, I really appreciate how Buffy raises points and asks questions that force us to think about the thinking process students are involved in during the digital writing process. More importantly, she clearly aims for students to document their own learning and to have teachers focus formative assessment on that process, ultimately leading to many of the goals that we’ve had for years when employing a writing workshop/portfolio pedagogy.  And, since she asked for some specific advice about how to move forward, I’ll offer a few points here that will also inform my thinking in the next week as I prepare to write about the digital mentor texts:

• Use the tools at hand. Teach students to use the digital tools at hand in order to become better readers, writers, and researchers. I know that there’s still a digital divide and that not all students have access to smart phones, tablet PCs, and high-speed Internet in their own homes, yet cloud-based services such as Diigo and Evernote are allowing students to capture their own thinking as well as links to websites, audio and video just about anywhere. They need to take responsibility to do that. See a link? A video? A podcast? Save and share it. Since teachers are using the library in a variety of different ways, from a very casual to very intense and thoughtful, help students become digital learners by inviting them to use these tools and share resources on-the-go.
• Embrace the messiness. The writing process has never been a linear one, at least not the same straight line for everyone. Despite what the posters in our classroom and the programs that people try to sell us may say, no writer worth his or her salt has ever gone straight through a process of pre-writing, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing. I’m not even able to do it in this one blog post, let alone for an article or a book. Thus, we need to acknowledge that the writing process is recursive and messy, and that needs to happen both in our instruction and assessment. For digital writing, we can invite students to literally take snapshots or record screen casts of what they are doing, what they’re thinking, and the questions that they have while in the process of researching and writing. Have students create inquiry guides for their peers using social bookmarking, wikis, or some other collaborative tool. Invite students to pose questions to one another about their research, and part of their assessment is based on how well they respond to these questions and concerns that their peers have raised.
• Make the process public. Whether your school is using wikis, a course management system, or some other type of social network to help students connect online, make sure that they are documenting and describing the process along the way. In addition to the suggestions above about embracing the messiness, they could have periodic checkpoints during a writing project in which they would be responsible for certain things (as, indeed, many students have always been responsible for having parts of projects done along the way). Part of what they might need to do is technical: set up accounts, watch screen cast tutorials, find _ many sources from academic databases and _ many more on the public web.  I am not saying that teachers should have every single one of these tasks are checkpoints set up before the project begins, as it could very well depend on the student, the topic, and the digital writing that he or she undertakes. Yet, holding them accountable along the way can still be done even if it is not tied to a formal quiz or essay test.
• Make the final product public, as well as the responses. Again, this returns to this idea that students should be accountable not only for their own work, but for their thoughtful critique and commentary on the work of others.  They can use tools like Diigo to annotate webpage products, Jing to record screencasts describing a website, or Video ANT to insert commentary on a video. As they read/view the work of others and respond to that work — in conjunction with their own experience as digital writers — they can then work together to develop evaluative criteria for their projects. Some of those criteria will be shared, and will most likely be focused on the content of the projects, will some of those criteria will be specific for each particular project. For instance, everyone may have to meet the broad goal of finding at least 10 sources and accurately documenting their work, yet individual students may go about this in different ways to the use of social bookmarking, bibliographic tools, or hyperlinks, based on the digital writing that they do.

So, those are some thoughts in response to Buffy’s insightful reflections on this first half of her year integrating digital writing. Sorry that they kind of read like a list of new year’s resolutions, but I hope they are helpful.

Also, as I prepare for the collaborative series, I’m looking for examples of what I would call “professional” digital mentor texts that I can write about. The first one that came to mind for me was Dove’s “Evolution” video. While I know that students would not be expected to create something exactly like this, I do think that it opens up opportunities for many conversations about what digital writing is and could be. If you have other ideas for mentor texts that have been made by professionals yet would still be appropriate to share with students as models of exemplary digital writing, please do let you know.

Until 2012…

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This morning, I was invited by Franki Sibberson to record a podcast for Choice Literacy, thinking broadly about the changes in technology and writing instruction over the past few years as well as the teaching approach that I outline in The Digital Writing Workshop. Here are the questions that she sent me ahead of time, with some brief answers that guided our conversation.

Can you define Digital Writing and Digital Writing Workshop for us?

• To borrow a definition from our co-authored NWP book, Because Digital Writing Matters, we define digital writing as “compositions created with, and oftentimes for, reading and/or viewing via a computer or other device that is connected to the Internet.” For me, I then think about three broad categories of digital writing:
  • Writing and responding to posts on blogs, microblogs, and social networks
  • Creating individual or multi-authored documents using wikis and collaborative word processors
  • Composing multimodal pieces such as podcasts and digital stories
• The digital writing workshop, then, is (to use the contemporary term) a “mash up” of digital writing and the writing workshop. For most teachers, then concept of the writing workshop — where students have choice in topic and genre, teachers use mini-lessons and conferring to guide writing, and students share, respond to, and publish work — is familiar from noted teacher researchers and scholars such as Lucy Calkins, Nancie Atwell, Penny Kittle and many others who come from that school of thought. Thus, blending the digital writing with the workshop approach leads us to a digital writing workshop.

Why do you think it is an important thing for teachers to think about?

• Since it is impossible to separate the act of writing from the use of technology (even pencil and paper are technology, right?) we need to think more and more about what digital tools such as computers, smart phones, video cameras, and other devices allow us to do (or, in some ways, not do) with our writing processes and products. Writing and technology are intertwined, and as we continue to think about how the shape of writing is changing in digital spaces, teachers should always be thinking ahead for how this will affect students’ literacy practices.

How have you seen the needs of student writers change in the last few years?

• In some ways, it’s the same as it ever was: students still need time, materials, and space to write. They need to have consistent, thoughtful feedback from teachers and peers, and, sadly, they need to pass those tests. Yet, as students adapt their writing to other digital spaces, for instance on social networks and text messages, they don’t always see what they are doing as “writing.” As teachers of writing, this is something that we need to help them understand. Purpose, audience, situation. These will always be the constants in writing, even if the modes and media continue to change.

What’s different/What’s the same when it comes to writing workshop?

• One key difference, obviously, is the technology. Ideally, we would all be working in a 1:1 environment where we are able to teach tech tips alongside elements of craft in digital writing spaces. Yet, we know this is not the case; some teachers and students have limited, if any, access. So, I think that we need to keep thinking about principles, no matter if you are working in a 1:1 situation, or if you are only in the computer lab once a month. What are you able to do, reasonably, given the time that you have access at school? What can you expect students to do outside of school with mobile devices or on other computers with access? We have always had some writers who excel and some who struggle, so those students will continue to be present in a digital writing workshop, yet we need to be especially sensitive to the technologies that they have available.

What role does technology play in digital writing?

• As I mentioned above, technology plays a role in all writing. Even three years ago, it might be that someone wanting to create a digital story would need to have a digital camera, a personal computer, and a voice recorder. Now, for those who have access, they can do all of that with a smart phone. So, as technologies converge on our devices, I think that it will become easier and easier to create thoughtful, well-crafted digital writing. Still, having access to a full suite of tools including digital cameras, modern computers with lots of RAM and storage, and fast internet is still important.

How do you balance the tools with the teaching of writing?

• To me, this is like the “teaching grammar in context” type of question. When we teach sentence combining, we can integrate a discussion of the semicolon vs. the colon, and that makes more sense than handing a student a worksheet. For digital writing, it is much the same. At the moment in the digital story when something needs to show a transition, then it is time to pull up the screen with the choice of transitions and talk about them. Why might you want to fade to black rather than have a page flip? Teaching the technology in the context of the writing process is what makes the digital writing workshop approach more than just “integrating technology”; instead, it is talk about the craft of digital writing.

Do you think that the craft of writing changes because of all of the new tools and new formats available to writers?

• Indeed, as I mentioned above, I think that the craft changes. What makes an effective “hook” for a traditional essay may, or may not, work in a podcast or in a digital story. Having a slide with a title may be appropriate in some shows, in others it may not, although essays almost always have titles at the top. So, as with any genre study, we need to think about what makes good digital writing in a variety of contexts.

What is a good way for teachers to start incorporating more digital writing into their classrooms?

• Pick on digital writing technology and go for it. For me, that tool would be a wiki. Look at a few examples, watch a tutorial on YouTube, and dive right in. The students will help you figure things out.

Other than your books, what are some resources, websites, etc. that you would recommend to teachers about Digital Writing Workshop? Who are the other experts we can learn from?

• The MIT/MacArthur series on digital media and learning
• Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out
• PBS FRONTLINE’s Digital Nation
• NWP Digital Is

Also, anything by Clay Shirky, Donald Tapscott, danah boyd, Jason Ohler, Will Richardson, Sherry Turkle, Chris Anderson, Tim Wu, or Henry Jenkins would be useful to understand the broader context of digital media and learning. Critics of digital media, who we need to read, understand, and argue against, include Nicholas Carr and Mark Bauerlein, and I am sure that there are more. Teachers/researchers that I read and respect include: Sara Kajder, Carl Young, Bud Hunt, Robert Rozema, Allen Webb, Danielle DeVoss, Punya Mishra, Matt Koehler, Charlie Moran, Anne Herrington, Rick Beach, Kathi Yancey, Doug Hartman, Jeff Grabill, Ellen Cushman, Gail Hawisher, Cynthia Selfe, Dickie Selfe, and many more and more that I am sure I have forgotten in this list.



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Random notes and ideas from day one at Computers and Writing 2011:

Opening Town Hall

• Susan Antlitz — how and why do we want interactive spaces for teaching?
• Sharon Cogdill — how do technologies control us?
• Bradley Dilger — reading and writing code, using small amounts of code to attain big results
• Patricia Freitag Ericsson — break the silence and talk about what we do in our jobs: “Recuse yourself from knowing everything about everything.”
• Dickie Selfe — encouraging us to think about the waste we create in techno rhetoric (literally, the garbage that our practices create and how toxic waste is affecting other countries and people)
• Jeremy Tirrell — great data visualization using Google Earth to talk about geographic implications of our work; helping to construct multiple narratives about work in computers and composition
• Janice Walker — are we still on the “lunatic fringe” of composition studies? Are we a field, discipline, or sub-discipline?
• Q/A:
  • Gail Hawisher — maybe we should still be called computers and writing
  • Dickie Selfe — we need to move outside of our discipline to work with others outside, too

Session A: Student Production of Digital Media

• Michael Neal, Florida State University Rory Lee, Florida State University Natalie Szymanski, Florida State University Matt Davis, Florida State University
• Presentation Website and Description of the Major
  • Thoughtful assignments and annotated examples of student work
• Notes from the conversation
  • Second year of the major and there are over 650 students
  • Support from Writing Center and Digital Studio
  • Students make choices about the technologies that they use to present different projects; can’t use the same digital platform more than once
  • What responsibility do we have to teach hardware/software in class? What should students do on their own or with other support?

Session B: Making Writing Socially Engaging: Asking Why New MediaDraws Us In

• Presenters:
  • Eric A Glicker, Rancho Santiago Community College — blogging as a recursive process that moves students beyond the classroom
  • Gian S. Pagnucci, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and David Schaafsma, University of Illinois at Chicago – baseball poetry for a literacy project that is not academic
  • Dennis G. Jerz, Seton Hill University — are we in a post-blogging era now that Facebook is ubiquitous; is blogging becoming the new 5-paragraph essay?
  • Daisy Pignetti, University of Wisconsin-Stout — thinking about Twitter and active reading
• Guiding questions:
  • How does social media create opportunities for writers?
  • Why is it that people find social networking pales as an engaging place to write?
  • How does social media invite peer-response and interaction?

Session C: Dynamic assessment practices for media and technology classes

• Presenters:
  • Dickie Selfe, Ohio State University — wiki as a tool for intentional adaptive communities; determining how length and content of oral “nuggets” of one-hour interviews contributed to an overall effect in multimodal composition; assessment was modified based on experiences with audiences
  • Tim Jensen, Ohio State University — experimental assessment using digital media; students developing the rubric from the bottom up; discussing the assessment criteria that they developed helped describe group effort
  • Kathryn Comer, Ohio State University  – intro to digital media with a project proposal, informal studio discussion and formal workshops, and analytic reflection; could students make an argument for the composing choices that they made in their project?
  • Scott Lloyd DeWitt, Ohio State University — accounting for production by focusing on the final product (project title, genre description/rhetorical moves, technologies used, and materials/references) with students developing assessment criteria concurrently
  • Chris Manion, Ohio State University — how can we frame multimedia composition through a heuristic “habits of thought”?
• Notes
  • Question in dynamic assessment processes: Do students actually participate in a democratic design, or do a few students dominate?
  • Do we only focus on the product? Is the writer her/himself the product? — Helping students focus on the process of assessment as a part of the instruction.
  • Improving student work not only over one term but, as instructors, improving our assignments and modeling excellent student work over time

Session D: Schools: Where the public and private collide

• Presenters: Ann D. David, University of Texas at Austin Amy E. Burke, University of Texas at Austin Audra Roach, University of Texas at Austin
• Notes
  • If teachers use smart phones themselves, and most students have access via phone, what is it that keeps us from using them in class?
  • Audience inquiry in social networks: search for patterns, examine self-representation, weigh affordances, author study
  • Writing in motion:
    • Writing in short bursts, different tempos
    • Moving between pieces of writing
    • Frequent peer response
    • “Revision forward”
    • Time and space to move

The luncheon keynote was Tim Wu, talking about his book, The Master Switch. The dinner keynote was Gail Hawisher, who gave a look back and forward on the field of computers and composition.

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Here at the eleventh hour, I am submitting my response to the White House’s “Advise the Advisor” survey. While I don’t really agree with the ways that they have framed the questions, I am sharing my responses here. Hope I get news of this much earlier next time so that I have time to compose longer, more thoughtful responses.

Parents: Responsibility for our children’s education and future begins in our homes and communities. What are some of the most effective ways you’re taking responsibility at a personal and local level for your child’s education?

Along with the traditional modes of volunteering for field trips and working concession stands, we are also inviting our own children to take typical kinds of homework assignments and infuse them with new technologies. For instance, when our son was asked to write a list of ways he used and conserved water in the house, he took a digital camera and documented all the ways we use water, presenting his final work in an online slideshow. We talk with our children’s teachers about ways that they can use technology to support critical and creative thinking.

Teachers: President Obama has set a goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. How are you preparing your students for college and career? What’s working and what challenges do you face?

As a teacher educator, and a Director of a site of the National Writing Project — the Chippewa River Writing Project at Central Michigan University — I see the challenges that teachers face as they are asked to “cover” mandated curriculum in ways that stifle student writers. I unequivocally encourage you to reinstate funding for the National Writing Project, as it is both the most cost-effective and professionally powerful way we can use federal dollars. Each site has at least a one-to-one match of local dollars to the federal grant, and we need to have high-quality professional development for all teachers if we ever expect our students to be strong writers and be prepared for college and career.

Students: In order to compete for the jobs of the 21st century, America’s students must be prepared with a strong background in reading, math and science along with the critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity needed to succeed in tomorrow’s workforce. How has your education prepared you for a career in the 21st century? What has worked and what challenges do you face?

My children would tell you about their experience in their elementary school where they are enrolled in a Chinese Immersion/International Baccalaureate program. They are, in all senses of the word, being educated in a “global” manner — through language, culture, math, social studies, science, reading, and service learning. We need to stop forcing our schools to compete for funding and, instead, share enough resources with all schools so that they might develop innovative programs like this.

I hope that one more voice added to this dialogue helps… now, I look forward to engaging in professional conversations during a great weekend at MRA 2011.

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Kelly Gallagher kicks off the Dublin Literacy Conference with his keynote on “Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It.” Here are some notes from his presentation.

• Kicks off with Barry Lane’s “Basalreaderville” parody. Interestingly, Barry asked me to have my students create accompanying slideshows that he could use in his performances. Here is a link to Katie Eckardt’s portfolio/slideshow she made for him.
• Read-i-cide — “the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools”
• Mike Schmoker’s new book, Focus: Elevating the Essentials To Radically Improve Student Learning.
• Gallagher is talking about sacrificing teaching in name of standards… I am not sure that this rhetorical approach of attacking standards is necessary anymore. The standards are not the curriculum, and we if we are engaging in a more holistic, integrated approach to teaching reading and writing, aren’t we meeting these standards and moving beyond them? In what ways can we move beyond this conversation about whether or not standards are useful or good? How can we think about teaching standards and not always seeing them as standardization?
• Gallagher is talking about the fact that we are losing a focus on writing. Very true. See also the new “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing” from WPA, NCTE, and NWP.
• Jeff McQuillan – The Literacy Crisis — more books equals more reading equals better reading
• Concept of “word poverty” — Gallagher is showing political cartoons and and talking how context and background matters to reading comprehension. He argues that our mission is to build background knowledge for our students. I wonder, is this, in some ways, an argument for teaching cultural literacy or, at least a more liberated vision of cultural literacy, ala E.D. Hirsch?
• Gallagher idea — read and respond to article of the week. Digital twist — have students post this to a blog or wiki, and copy quotes, make hyperlinks to the article, embed images, make connections to what others have written in their posts.
• “Many kids are literally starving the lobes of the prefrontal cortex of their brains.” Jane Healy, Endangered Minds: Why Our Children Can’t Think and What We Can Do About It
• Gallagher cites Kenneth Burke — imaginative rehearsals
• Gallagher — need to find the “sweet spot” of instruction, not too heavy and not too light
• Gallagher – “What you bring to the page is often more important than what’s on the page.”
• Ideas from Gallagher
  • Sometimes the framing of the text should be motivational in nature. Reading an article about olestra and giving having them taste test potato chips.
  • More often, the framing should be to help gain surface-level comprehension. Carol Jago talks about the idea about giving students a guided tour during the first part of reading a text, and then dropping off and helping the kids go on the budget tour by themselves.
• I had to leave before the end so I could go get things set up for my own session! I appreciate Gallagher’s humor and insights and look forward to hearing him talk again at the NWP Spring Meeting in a few weeks.

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So, I just finished hosting the lightening round of Tweeting that is know as #engchat (wiki link).

I sat down sat down at Panera with my bread bowl at about 6:45, thinking that I would have time to eat and follow a casual conversation. An hour later, there were so many great ideas that emerged that I barely lifted my fingers from the keyboard, let alone my spoon. That said, I just want to catch a few of these ideas, and a few bites of my cold soup, before the restaurant closes!

• Even in a world of hyper-connected English teachers, we are still asking the right questions, both about teaching and technology. About access, both to the net and the tools. About teaching, both the content and the process. About assessment, both how and why. I really appreciated the questions that people asked, especially how they forced me to keep coming back to the writing and the writer, not just talk about tools.
• No matter how little or how much access we (and our students) have, we need to continue advocating for more. Milton Chen in Education Nation talks about how 1:1 access is a digital civil right, and this conversation on #engchat tonight reminds me of that. Both the chat itself (the skills and processes that I needed to engage in a twitter-based chat with colleagues is both a mental and technical challenge, not to mention how to stay focused) as well as the topics that it raises (when, for instance, do we want students to attend to an online chat as compared to a face-to-face one?) remind me of how incredibly complex this thing called “digital writing” really is. It is both immediate and archived. It is both multilayered/multithreaded/multimodal, yet intently personal and focused. It can enrich our minds and offer us alternatives, or it can drive us to distraction. When and how do we teach digital writing so that it can be useful and productive?
• There are incredible possibilities. One thread of the conversation spun off into the possibilities of gaming and how one teacher, Carl, uses Scratch with his middle school students. Showing the potential for interactive media as a space for storytelling (even if it is not “gaming” in the sense of programming and designing a full narrative with complex options), this example shows the ways in which a student can work to think through the process of writing in a different form. At one point, someone in the #engchat asked something similar to “what isn’t writing then?” and I think that it raises a good point. Whether spoken, printed, or otherwise designed with media, I think that “writing” is intentional. It involves an act of planning, revising, and producing. This Scratch example, to me, is clearly writing.

Those are some brief, initial reflections. I am so thankful for having had the chance to lead the #engchat session tonight, as it gets my new year and new semester off to a good start, helping me rethink what it is that I hope to accomplish in my teaching, research, and writing in the coming months.

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For two years in a row, Sara Kajder, Bud Hunt, and I have presented Three Reports from Cyberspace. We plan to submit for NCTE 2011, so with any luck we will get to work together again and share in a wonderful conversation before, during, and after the conference. For the moment, I want to focus on that “after” part from this year’s conversation, one that began first in an open Google Doc that generated some initial conversation, led to a Google Moderator forum that we used on the day of the presentation, and now takes us back to the wiki for planning next year’s session. Bud has been posting some videos from our Orlando engagement, the first featuring Sara talking about assessment, and promises more to come.

So, on new year’s eve, I take my time to pause and look back at what we said, what our colleagues said, and what my agenda needs to be for 2011. To begin, a few quotes from that open Google Doc, loosely organized into the categories we discussed at NCTE — teaching, infrastructure, and assessment:

Infrastructure:

• Suddenly, though, for the first time, I really worry about approaching the point where the state of the equipment gets in the way of the learning. I’m not there yet. I can just see some inklings of this problem on the horizon, and the fact is: my school doesn’t  have a lot of money to spend on equipment. ~ Kevin Hodgson, William E. Norris Elementary School, MA
• The great thing is that my district purchased interactive white boards for each teacher in my school, a new computer lab for my school, and netbooks for each kid in 5th-8th grade in the district. They have also installed wi-fi in each building in the district. The not-so-great thing is that none of these things are functional. It is mid-November. The kids haven’t seen the netbooks, the white boards are not yet interactive, and the computer lab tables are empty. ~ Angela Knight
• The subject of all things tech at my school is a sore one. We have 3 computer labs (2 of which are used for classes) and a mobile lab. Our free lab and library computers are pathetically slow. (We’re talking computers with places for the square 3×5 disks.) The mobile lab is better, but they’re not maintained as well as they need to be so many of our lap tops aren’t functional. ~ April Estep
• My report from cyberspace is bleak. Two years ago I had a Writing lab to use with my students on a daily basis. Students could research on the internet, compose papers at the keyboard and do various online activities I selected for them to do. Today I need to share that same lab, so my 140 students need to share with 280 others. ~ Joanne Wisniewski
• I’m at a 1:1 tablet school, so access is excellent. We’re in our second year of all the Middle School kids having their own blogs. Teacher comfort level with them is increasing, and while the new sixth graders take a bit of time to acclimate, they’re pretty much good to go by the second trimester. I occasionally feel guilty that we’re not doing more, pushing harder, since we’ve got the technology available. The good thing is that the tech feels like who we are at this point, so we’re not just pulling out shiny things. ~ Meredith Stewart, Cary Academy
• In my local district, many teachers and parents are feeling upset because, in the same year, (a) the district had parents buy school supplies like paper, crayons, etc. instead of the school providing it all, (b) the district put iPads in all the 1st grade classrooms.  Not from the same pot of money, but there’s a general feeling that if strapped for cash you should buy paper and crayons first, then iPads. ~ Anne Whitney
• I use lots of technology in my classroom, and my kids also use technology frequently.  One of the biggest obstacles to participating in authentic tech use in the classroom are the barriers erected by the district to protect students.  Bandwidth is a huge issue, with our upgrade, and the entire system going to a universal login (any building, you can access your documents).  This sounds like a good idea, but has slowed things down too much. ~ Freyja Bergthorson

Teaching:

• (With an iPad initiative starting next year)… “This will be incredible for kids, but will take a lot of energy. Will I be able to keep up? I’ve never felt this unconfident before.” ~ Sandy Hayes, Becker Middle School, MN
• First step: learning about the existing knowledge, skills and attitudes that support or inhibit people’s interest in exploring digital media tools for composition. Second step: creating simple collaborative on-ramp activities that help teachers experience success quickly to build confidence. Third step: introducing key concepts that help them connect mass media, popular culture and digital technology to their existing instructional priorities. Eventually, teachers will design, implement and assess their own projects which will be shared online. ~ Renee Hobbs, Temple University, Philadelphia
• I got a Smart Board and LCD projector installed this year, so I’m enjoying that – but I don’t feel like I’m using the Smart Board as much as I should be. How are English teachers using Smart Boards in an interactive way? ~ Jennifer Sekella
• For schools with International Baccalaureate programs, in the US and around the world, cyberspace is the most powerful and compelling place ever for their students. They are in the process of activating the largest social learning network in the world, with privacy and safety features and multiple security levels.

Assessment

• I am scared that very few teachers that I know really use technology. This is just not good for students! We are all so obsessed with raising test scores, there is no demand at all. Tech is used for Read 180, SRI tests, but not for exploring, researching, creating. That’s a problem. ~ Teresa Ilgunas, Lennox Middle School, CA

And, some active verbs that we generated from the session at NCTE that indicate thoughts about what we can do in our classrooms, schools, districts, and communities:

• Risk
• Share
• Advocate
• Push
• Model
• Motivate
• Try
• Fail
• Do
• Fail better
• Fail big, fail better
• Play
• Experience
• Have fun
• Implement
• Change
• Experiment
• Question authority
• Engage
• Revisit
• Reflect
• Revise
• Think
• Entice
• Archive
• Yodel
• Produce
• Synthesize
• Craft
• Scrap
• Celebrate
• Learn
• Seduce
• Use what we have
• Dump the “buts”

So, where does this leave me at in my thinking about our state of “educational cyberspace” this year?

First, I would suggest that we are at the “tipping point” for mobile/1:1 computing and, as educators, we should advocate for nothing less in our classrooms, especially given the web-based tools that we can ask students to use, from office suites to photo, audio, and video editing. Given the reports from above, and what I know about the digital divide that still exists in our schools and communities, I know that there are no silver bullets. Yet, the fact that mobile devices now cost about the same, or less, than textbooks and that we can ask students to live an academic life fully online, there really are no excuses for not moving in this direction. This will take a great deal of work in teacher education and professional development, no doubt, but the fact is that we should start with the assumption that students could and should have 1:1 access, and begin to teach teachers how to work that way.

Second, in terms of where I am going in my own thinking and work for the new year, I want to make sure that we continue talking about digital writing, not just tools. I am thinking about this in all of my presentations and teaching, making conversations about writing as explicit as possible, even when we are caught up in learning the tools. For instance, I will often pause and ask teachers to think about the actions they have performed when they have engaged in a task like composing a writer’s profile or collaborating on Google Docs. We talk about the writing process, the 21st century literacies they used, the common core standards that the task addresses. We need to continue to make the conversations about teaching and learning, no matter how the devices change.

Finally, I hope to continue this conversation with all of you this year, beginning next Monday night, January 3rd, on #engchat. The topic, “What’s happening in your digital writing workshop?” will, I hope, give us a chance to talk about the many examples of good work that teachers and students are engaged in. As we prepare for the conversation, I offer one last report from cyberspace this year… this one from Joel Malley, an NWP teacher, that he created as a part of his testimonial to Congress last fall. I hope that his video offers us some points to consider as we think about the obstacles and opportunities that face us in cyberspace in 2011. I recognize that we aren’t all able to teach in situations similar to Malley’s, but I do think that his take on teaching writing in a digital make for good points to consider as we continue the conversation.

Writing in the Digital Age from Joel Malley on Vimeo.

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Notes from 2010 Michigan Virtual University Online Learning Symposium
November 9, 2010 at Michigan State University

Opening Keynote: Steve Midgley, Deputy Director of Education Technology, US DOE

• Context
  • National Technology Plan (released just today), Four Components: Mobility, Social Interactions, Digital Content, Print to Online
  • This does not mean that we will have a “teacherless” curriculum, but the online marketplace offers many interesting opportunities
  • How do we find the right content and connect it with the right student with the right teacher at the right time?
  • Challenge from President Obama: “By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.”
  • The crucial thing about this is that if you graduate every student in the pipeline today, we will still not meet this goal. Stats show that many students are not graduating from high school, so this implies that many people need to get re-engaged. This will only happen with online learning.
• Content
  • Teaching, Learning, Assessment — Infrastructure — Productivity
  • Assessment the way it is working today is pretty fouled up
  • Using $350 million to develop new, next generation assessment
  • DARPA project to assess Navy ensigns “in the field”
• Learning
  • Some major points
    • 21st century expertise
    • How people learn
    • Personalized learning
    • Universal design for learning
    • Informal + formal
  • Social search — more people go to YouTube from Facebook than from Google
    • What does it look like in a social context that is professional?
  • New models (Netflix/Blockbuster) — what does this look like in education?
• Assessment
  • Major points
    • Measure what matters
    • Embedded assessments
    • Real time feedback
    • Persistent learning record
    • Universal design
    • Continuous improvement
  • New models of assessment being developed being developed
  • NOTE: I haven’t read up much about this, but there is information about it being distributed through MDE and other news outlets.
• Teaching
  • Main points
  • What does “highly effective” really mean in an online environment?
  • Connected
  • Online
  • Informal + formal — we can’t organize in ways offline that we can online — some technologies require connectivity to work at all (e.g., Wikipedia)
  • Inspired
• Questions and Answers
  • Wikipedia — many schools block it, and then students are expected to use it in college to get started with research — this is crazy
  • What other “spaces” can we create for teachers to share ideas and resources? What is officially sanctioned by the state, and what is not? What is the role of textbook publishers and other research-based work to integrate with teacher knowledge?
  • We can’t test everything that we say we want kids to learn, only certain things, and some kids are learning more at different times and in different ways. So, then the question becomes what happens to kids as they figure out seat time/credit hours?
  • Intellectual property — how do teachers’ ideas get recognized in these online spaces? Creates problems with copyright and fair use. Creative Commons and Open Courseware as one option, but also some states and districts have earned RTTT money and are sharing through other avenues.

Conversation with Michigan Online Teachers of the Year

• What has surprised you about online learning?
  • The personal connection, the human touch. Part of this is about the evolution of the internet and how we use social networks today. It is very easy to develop the relationships.
  • When you never see students face-to-face, and you are teaching 125 a semester, when someone writes that “you are my favorite teacher” — that is motivating. The additional thing that surprises me is the connections that you make with your mentors and how much of a factor that they play in their students’ lives.
• What are your major apprehensions?
  • The fact that the technologies continue to change. Need to keep on top of things, for instance with the 21 Things for 21st Century Educators. (NOTE: I am not so sure that I agree with this statement — I think that there are generally principles about online learning and digital literacy that we need to know, but that we get way too caught up with the tools.)
  • If we don’t teach kids how to use their mobile phones properly, how will they learn these life skills? (NOTE: Again, I am a bit concerned about the tone that we take when we assume that we, as educators, have the “right” answer about how, when, and why we use the tools. Not that I disagree with the principle that we invite them to use these devices and applications, but I do worry that once we co-opt the digital tools and spaces that they are familiar with, we are changing the purposes and audiences for which they write and work).
  • Assessment is built in to the system — the fact that student time online is logged.
• What are the roles that teachers and students play in the process of online learning?
  • If you are just introducing it, you have to give it time. Initially, it depends on the success of the students that are there — highly motivated kids are successful and motivate other kids to continue working, too.
  • This is rewarding for teachers — we enjoy having the opportunity to teach in a more flexible model. Old model was to have AP kids in advanced classes and remedial kids in other courses (kind of a dumping ground, without mentor support). We have now moved to a model where most students who are in our courses actually get to work and achieve a passing grade.
  • We can bait the hook, but students need to bite. People talk about the way that online learning is better because it offers students new opportunities as compared to what they have experienced in school. This is especially true for students in credit recovery. Still, they have to be motivated and self-directed. (NOTE: So, in what ways does online learning really change the paradigm? That is, if students are reluctant to engage in school, for whatever reason, does the flexibility of online learning really overcome the negative feelings that they have towards school?) Can you meet them online through Skype and Adobe Connect or other similar tools?
  • What are your strategies for connecting with online students? It is not about loving your subject, it is about loving your students. Students see it and recognize it, and they reciprocate.

Lunch Keynote: Milton Chen, Senior Fellow and Director Emeritus at George Lucas Educational Foundation — “Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools” and Edutopia

• Interesting note — Chen was born in Negaunee, and his father was a mining engineer
  • “I am here as an accident of history” — China was an ally, and my father was able to come to the US and learn about mining at Penn State, and my parents were married in 1945, although my mother didn’t arrive until 1949. They didn’t plan to stay in the US, but the stayed and I was born in 1953.
• Imagine an Education Nation: “A learning society where education of children is teh highest priority, equal to a strong economy, high employment, and national security, which rely on education.”
  • The book is a “curation” of many resources from Edutopia; interesting that the magazine has been discontinued; e-books now outsell print books
  • “I think this is the first decade of the twenty-first century for education.” — we are at the tipping point.
  • Innovation — the key to creating an education nation; it is a “must do” than a “nice to know”
  • Bugscope
  • Google is 12 years old, YouTube is 5 years old, Edutopia YouTube Channel
  • Clay Shirky — we are witnessing the biggest change in human innovation and creativity in history; every media that we have ever known is now on a device in our pocket next to every other media
• These are old ideas… Dewey
  • “From the standpoint of the child, the great waste in the school comes from his inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside the school… within the school itself while, on the other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning at school.” The School and Society Lecture, University of Chicago, 1899
• 6 Leading Edges of K-12 Innovation
  • Thinking
  • Curriculum and Assessment
  • Technology
  • Time/Place
  • Co-Teaching
  • Youth
• The Edge of Our Thinking: Ending the Education Wars
  • From the either/or to both/and hybrids
  • Phonics and whole language
  • Arts and core curriculum (opening minds with the arts)
  • Learning in nature and technology
• Curriculum Edge: Globalizing the Curriculum
  • Walter Payton High School, Chicago
  • The Confucius Institute
  • The internet makes learning international
• Technology Edge
  • We want all students to use technology; weapons of mass instruction (one-to-one is the weapon that we need to employ)
    • We need to reduce the 1:6 student/computer level to a one-to-one (it can be done for $250 or less, per year)
  • iPod, iListen, iRead: EUSD iRead Program
    • Technology is only technology for those who were born before it existed
    • Using the iPod as a device to record students’ own voices reading: the “missing mirror” in literacy instruction
    • This is not about just getting to the standards, this is about having kids learn more, and learn earlier
    • Have students see how other students are learning; what are the different paths that other students take and how can we learn from this public learning process?
• The Time/Place Edge
  • Getting kids out into the community for place-based learning
• Co-Teaching
• The Greatest Edge: Today’s Youth
  • Students as teaching assistants (GenYes)
  • Edutopia’s Profiles of Ten Digital Learners
  • 12-13 year old students are doing some of the most compelling work
• What is your definition of a great school?
  • Make it short, make it measurable — are the kids running into school as fast as they are running out of it; are the kids so excited about their work that they do not want to leave school?

Closing Keynote: Richard Ferdig, Kent State University

• Building the plane while we are flying it — and that’s OK
• Is K-12 online learning academically effective? — this is not the right question
  • Example of TV and video games — not good for kids, right?
  • Actually, depending on the TV or game, it is good for you.
  • Asking the right question — when are courses taught “better” online as compared to face-to-face?
  • Quote from USDOE: “On average, online learning students performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”
• So, the better question is “When is online learning academically effective?” or “Under what conditions is online learning academically effective?”
  • How is online more effective? What are the conditions under which it is more effective?
  • Is “X” technology better for learning? — Sometimes (under certain conditions)
• So, when is K-12 online learning academically effective?
  • Two reports about professional development for online instructors and student learning
  • Virtual School Clearinghouse
  • iNACOL – Conference and Book
• So, what do we look at?
  • Student and Teacher
    • With teachers, we know that a teacher has a significant role in mentoring students through their online experiences
    • Highly qualified teachers matter in virtual schooling as well
    • How can we get highly qualified teachers?
      • Professional development — because not any teacher can teach online, they need particular skill sets for teaching online — engaging parents and mentors, using virtual school resources
      • Teacher education is not the answer — they are not working with K-12 online schools. Do they have virtual internship programs? Most teachers leave colleges of education without any preparation to teach online.
      • Lack of PD opportunities – not all have online experiences, only 21% had a customized experience
      • Does PD work — sometimes. PD only works when teachers take charge of their PD experience.
      • PCK — talk about teacher knowledge for practice, in practice, and of practice
      • Classroom — inquiry — community
      • Suggestions/Recommendations:
        • Record and reflect on exemplary practice
        • Ownership of the PD model, using innovative means and tools
  • • Does online learning affect student retention?
      • Retention is a significant problem, and they drop out for different reasons such as their own individual reasons, or institutional reasons. This happens at key transitions points, students are myopic, and there are disconnected understandings about what is happening and why.
    • Solutions
      • Better communication
      • Individualized instruction
      • Additional mentoring
      • Connections to jobs
    • Why did it work?
      • Accepted by peers
      • Accepted by online teachers
      • Learning styles were met
      • Connections to real world
      • More opportunities for expression
      • In short, all the reasons they dropped out of their F2F school is why they succeeded online
• Understanding Virtual Schools
  • 80/20 — most of what happens across states is common, although there are some unique features depending on the state
    • Partnerships — including school, university, research, and evaluation
    • Exponential growth
    • Retaining both students and teachers
    • The funding dilemma/opportunity
  • Best practices
    • Engage in attention on pedagogy, innovation with technology, etc.
• What are some ways to get to better practice?
  • Social media tools
  • Innovative tools — games/sims (Mission Biotech, OpenSim, Scratch, Yoyogames)
  • Kent State vStem Classroom

Reflections on the day

Along with all the technology interests that I have had over the years, my formal introduction to online learning began around the turn of the century when I was trained as an online instructor with the Michigan Virtual High School. Because of a variety of reasons, not the least of which was starting grad school, I taught my last online course for them in 2002. Given my continuing interests in online and hybrid models of learning — especially in professional development for teachers — it was good to come to the conference today and get reconnected with the state of online learning.

I do have significant concerns about the commercialization of online learning and how models like MIVU, Blackboard, textbook companies selling products, charter schools and other organizations who are working, in one way or another, for a profit versus the model of open courseware, collaboration, hybridity, and free or opensource web-based tools. This is a significant wedge that continues to grow. For instance, I set my courses up with a wiki, invite students to use free tools for collaboration and bibliography management, and engage with a variety of other tools. contrast this with the subscription that my university pays for to use Blackboard, including all the proprietary tools and content management.

One of the resources that I was reminded of, and I know I need to continue my participation in, is Edutopia. Milton Chen talked about the many ways that educators are innovating, and that the “internet makes learning international.” It’s been one year since I was invited to be a moderator of a group on Multimedia Literacy, and I need to get involved again.

Also, the implications for professional development for online teachers has just as much, if not more, resonance with our needs for traditional professional development. One of the main points that I will take from the final talk by Richard Ferdig is the fact that teachers, like students, need customized, just-in-time learning opportunities to find out more about how to teach and learn in their own context. I hope that we are doing some of that with our work this year in the CRWP/CGRESD partnership, and I look forward to seeing results from that work.

It was an interesting day, especially in the sense that this conference was one that I chose to attend because it was outside of my normal areas of conference-going, yet remained on the border of them and moved my thinking forward in new ways.

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In just a few weeks, Jossey-Bass will release the new book that Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, and I wrote with the National Writing Project: Because Digital Writing Matters. Here is part of the official blurb about the book:

As many teachers know, students may be adept at text messaging and communicating online but do not know how to craft a basic essay. In the classroom, students are increasingly required to create web-based or multi-media productions that also include writing. Since writing in and for the online realm often defies standard writing conventions, this book defines digital writing and examines how best to integrate new technologies into writing instruction.

Over the past few weeks, a number of NWP folks have received copies of the book, and here are some of their reviews. If I have missed someone’s, please let me know:

Andrea Zellner’s Book Review

The authors address all of the issues that surround taking one’s students into online and digital environments.  They begin with a discussion defining the nature of this type of composition.  The text then moves into more prosaic concerns, those concerns that ultimately make or break the taking of instruction online or digital: issues of copyright, acceptable use policies, standards and benchmarks, assessment.  I was impressed that even the physical layout of a computer lab was considered: the very physical positioning of the students and teacher has an impact on the overall learning ecology.

Steven Moore’s “Guns, Germs, and… Digital Writing?”

Because Digital Writing Matters speaks to the important idea of balance in many ways; talking first about the value of using writing to organize ideas in new and useful ways and then about the significant role that tinkering with technology plays in learning. You can do too much of either and the communication event fails to have an effect. Too much technology and not enough methodology and the writer or writing teacher becomes encumbered like a soldier whose sword has a one ton hilt. It won’t matter how sharp the blade is if you can’t lift the weapon.

Kevin Hodgson’s Book Review — check out the link, because he has an embedded Glogster file there!

That aside, there are many things that stand out for me in this book (which is the companion to NWP’s Because Writing Matters, which laid out the rationale for writing as a means of learning across all curriculum). Among the points where I grabbed my highlighter and marked up the text (much to the surprise of my sons, who kept asking me why I was writing in a book):

• I like and think it is important that much of what we are calling writing falls under the term of “composition,” which involves using elements of words, audio, video, image and more to create a sense of meaning. That mixed-up, mashed-up element is highlighted throughout the book, as is the need to be able to teach those elements to our young writers/composers.
• The book highlights many NWP teachers in the classroom, showcasing a wide range of projects on various themes: engagement, assessment, curriculum alignment, etc. That is very helpful to have. I know a lot of the folks mentioned here, and admire their work immensely from afar. I like that they are being recognized, even though there are plenty more NWP folks doing amazing work, too.
• The chapter on the ecologies of digital writing was fascinating for me. I guess I hadn’t given this idea enough thought when it comes to the physical setting of a connected classroom. I have thought about the online environment, but pulling these two strands together (physical and virtual space) was an interesting turn.
• I appreciated the long list of “traits and actions” that are associated with digital writing because they highlight a vast array of elements of what is going on when young people compose with computers and devices. This list runs from creativity/originality to observations/inquiry to the remix culture. Plus, I am a sucker for lists.
• The sense of play is all over the stories in this book. We need time to play with technologies ourselves, and we need to give students the time to play and experiment, too. It’s hard to overstate this.
• The authors use the phrase “double helix” to describe the meshing (or not) of technology curriculum standards with writing standards. I love that phrase because it shows both the connections and the separate qualities of both.

Finally, there is Bud Hunt’s thoughtful photo composition: Lenses

Plus two more critical reviews, which I welcome, from reviews on Amazon.

This book makes it seem like digital writing is *special*, different than other writing; but we could say the same thing about writing on wax tablets, then parchment, then on paper, then on a typewriter… I don’t really believe the medium of Microsoft Word or Google Docs significantly impacts how we *think* about how we write. It possibly has more to do with the issue of *audience*, not medium — and in that case, a good “digital writing” book should make this more apparent from the first page. (Dame Droiture)

While this book covers the basic ways of communicating via e-mail, texting, and the way these ‘genres’ have influenced “standard” writing, it’s not a very creative way of addressing the problem. Cultural practice changes very fast, and digital cultural practice changes superfast, so I think it’s preferable that teachers do their own “cultural study” of digital writing and decide for themselves its significance and influence, or better yet, develop personal assignments figuring out ways to get students to meta-analyze the way they write depending on the medium and to whom their writing. (JackOfMostTrades)

So, that’s what people are saying. I look forward to continuing the conversation.



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